Welcome friend! I am a huge fan of For All Mankind TV show. Space exploration mixed with historical fiction is a combination I enjoy, and having watched the intricacies of space politics, The Apollo Murders offered an opportunity to read about it.
Written by Chris Hadfield, one of the most seasoned and accomplished astronauts in the world, I could count on this book to have real details. Hadfield was selected by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 1992, so for those of you looking to support Canadian authors, here is one! Hadfield is also known for his book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, which was published in 2013. Anyway, let’s look at what The Apollo Murders is about. Find my thoughts on the book after!
Chris Hadfield | Goodreads | Apollo Murders #1
An exceptional debut thriller and “exciting journey” into the dark heart of the Cold War and the space race from New York Times bestselling author and astronaut Chris Hadfield (Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary).
1973: a final, top-secret mission to the Moon. Three astronauts in a tiny spaceship, a quarter million miles from home. A quarter million miles from help.
NASA is about to launch Apollo 18. While the mission has been billed as a scientific one, flight controller Kazimieras “Kaz” Zemeckis knows there is a darker objective. Intelligence has discovered a secret Soviet space station spying on America, and Apollo 18 may be the only chance to stop it.
But even as Kaz races to keep the NASA crew one step ahead of their Russian rivals, a deadly accident reveals that not everyone involved is quite who they were thought to be. With political stakes stretched to the breaking point, the White House and the Kremlin can only watch as their astronauts collide on the lunar surface, far beyond the reach of law or rescue.
Full of the fascinating technical detail that fans of The Martian loved, and reminiscent of the thrilling claustrophobia, twists, and tension of The Hunt for Red October, The Apollo Murders is a high-stakes thriller unlike any other. Chris Hadfield captures the fierce G-forces of launch, the frozen loneliness of space, and the fear of holding on to the outside of a spacecraft orbiting the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour as only someone who has experienced all of these things in real life can.
Strap in and count down for the ride of a lifetime.
The Apollo Murders – Review
The Apollo Murders is a 480-page tome, so it’s a commitment. As I do sometimes, I tried it in all formats. I started in ebook form to get the most time with it in the beginning, switched to audio — Ray Porter is a fantastic narrator, making it feel like a full cast and portraying the characters’ emotional states really well — and then finally physical. I always come back to physical. With a thick book, there is always the exhilaration of making good progress. I could not only see it but feel it in the weight!
The Apollo Murders has numerous points of view, though the protagonist is Kaz. His dream to become an astronaut was shattered when he lost his eye in a plane crash, but he is meant to be part of the program and finds himself as liaison between the military and NASA for the final Apollo mission to the moon. It is the time of the Cold War. There is intel that the Russians have deployed a telescope, which they will soon be arming with a very high-calibre camera, allowing them to get clear pictures of everything on Earth. The US has been conducting experiments in Area 51 and does not want Russians to be able to look in there, so they task the Apollo 13 team to somehow make the station inoperable. It sounds like a wild idea, and as is space itself, terrifying. To have to step out of their ship, do a space walk onto an entity that they have only spied upon, disable it, and then continue on is a daunting task. But astronauts are not new to dangerous situations, and the crew has no choice but to do their best.
With some stories, you reach a point where there is no looking back. I remember that point with The Apollo Murders. At 37%, when the astronauts reach Almaz, shit hits the fan for the first time. Chris Hadfield wrote a high-stakes nail-biter that I could not put down from here!
The tension is so high with what the military wants the astronauts to do, the chances of equipment failure, team member differences… all the ways this can go wrong are endless. And of course, the Russians are watching and have their own defense mechanisms in place. I liked having the Russian perspective in the story. It enhanced the world-building and upped the stakes tenfold because I was privy to what they were doing. The cat-and-mouse game was fun to read about. It’s the Cold War— both America and Russia are wary of each other and want to come out on top of the space race. They would do anything they can to sabotage each other and show the world that they are the best.
“So for the first time in history, the United States is going to take hostile military action in space”.
Kaz, pg 99
Caught in between the political drama are the people — the Apollo crew, the Russian cosmonauts, the ground crew for both countries, as well as the scientists who have been trying to explore the moon. In space programs, accidents can happen. People die, but the work continues. Kaz has seen many losses in his career, and he has learned to carry on with his grief. To witness these losses during a high-profile military-NASA mission was even more stressful.
I also enjoyed the angle of a potential spy amongst the astronauts, and at the end of the story, I felt like only I knew the truth. That is such a powerful ending and way to empower the reader at the end. Everyone thinks they know everyone else, but certain details are only available to those who are going through it and the reader.
I loved The Apollo Murders and will be making time for the next book in the series, The Defector. This one is not about space, but Chris Hadfield will be returning to the setting in the third book, Final Orbit, out October 7, 2025.
A book I was reminded of: Do You Dream of Terra Two?
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